In a pretty incredible turn of events, my parents, who have lived within a drivable-in-one-hour radius since their births, are moving to Nashville, Tennessee. In other words, they pretty much haven't left New Hampshire/Southern Maine, ever. Now they will be packing up and moving to the South. Holy mackerel.
In order to do this, they need to sell their house. In order to sell their house, they need to bring it back to "desirable for someone else" level. It hasn't been at that level for some time.
Because of their needs, I flew up to Manchester, NH, then was driven to New Durham, NH on Wednesday night, prepared to do a bunch of work. Here is said work:
Second Floor Bathroom
About a year and a half ago or so, my mom saw a chip in the paint in the ceiling. Instead of patching that chip, then repainting over that patch, she decided to broaden the chip by attempting to remove everything on that ceiling, down to the Sheetrock. Seriously.
Over many days of scraping, here's where the ceiling had "progressed" to by the time I was home to help out:
And a closeup of the stubborn, unchippable ceiling coverings:
The only real solution to this horrible ceiling problem was to take a bucket or two of joint compound, and "skim coat" the ceiling in its entirety. In other words, cover the ceiling in a thin layer of joint compound in order to match the 'depth' of the remaining ceiling covering.
Note: The compound goes on pink, and dries white. It's very helpful.
Once dry, time for a second coat in some spots:
Once the entire ceiling was coated, imperfections were patched with a second coat, and everything was dry, it was time to sand. Ugh.
Sanding a ceiling is terrible work. Human arms are generally not engineered to be above the head over long periods of time. Making things worse is the constant pushing and moving on said arm. On top of that, there is a constant rain of joint compound particulate matter covering everything in sight. To combat the rain, and make cleanup (not of the particulate, but from the messy gunshot wound from the attempted suicide mid-project) a bit easier:
After sanding (and expert gunshot wound repair):
I have no idea what's on the TV behind me in that image, but it looks just impossible to watch.
Once everything was sanded, the project end was nearing. Time to paint, and use painter's tape:
All finished:
not to self-horn-toot, but it looks way better then when I began, seventy three hours prior to this being taken. Just kidding. But it did take a long time.
Next time? The floor in that very same room was replaced. STAY TUNED!
No comments:
Post a Comment